Neuro & cognitive
Selank
A synthetic heptapeptide related to tuftsin, marketed online for anxiety despite no regulatory approval and almost no independent human evidence.
Also known as: Selank acetate, TP-7
Evidence passport
Last reviewed 2026-08-23
- Evidence level
- L1Mechanistic
- Confidence
- Very low confidence
- Human efficacy
- 8/100
- Human safety
- 10/100
- Regulatory status
- Experimental / research
- Development
- Unclear
- Routes
- Nasal· unapproved
- Evidence base
- Mostly preclinical
- Furthest stage
- Not established
- Source curation
- Sources fully curated
- Clinical maturity
- No established Western clinical programme
Most of this evidence comes from animals and cells
Overview
Clinical maturity: No established Western clinical programme
Routes & formulations
Marketed / research routes — never approved
Reported research-market use is intranasal. That describes what is sold, not what is studied or approved — there is no approved formulation for any route.
Route availability is not evidence of efficacy, and evidence from one route does not transfer to another. The Registry never provides dosing or sourcing information.
Peptide lifecycle
Discovery
Preclinical
Phase I
Phase II
Phase III
Approved
No established development programme in FDA/EMA-regulated regions identified in the curated record.
What it is
A seven-amino-acid synthetic peptide derived from the immune peptide tuftsin, promoted online as an anxiolytic and nootropic.
What people claim
- Reduces anxiety without sedation
- Improves cognition and stress resilience
What the evidence actually says
The human evidence base is too thin and too concentrated to grade above mechanistic territory for the marketed claims. Popularity in research-chemical circles is not a data source.
Human evidence
- No adequately powered, independently replicated randomised controlled trials support the anxiolytic claims.
- The FDA notes it lacks important human safety information for compounded Selank.
Preclinical evidence
- Animal and cell studies of tuftsin-related immunomodulatory and behavioural effects.
Animal and cell findings are Level 1–2 evidence.
Mechanism and pathways
- Proposed modulation of GABAergic signalling and enkephalin metabolism.
- Structural relationship to the endogenous immune peptide tuftsin.
Safety and unknowns
- FDA material flags potential immunogenicity and impurity risks for compounded Selank.
- No systematic human safety dataset exists for the products actually sold.
Cancer relevance
No established human signal
Regulatory status
Not approved by the FDA or other major Western regulators. FDA compounding safety material states that compounded Selank may pose immunogenicity and impurity risks and that the FDA lacks important human safety information for it.
Evidence grade
Cell, receptor or computational work explaining how something could work.
What would change our rating?
- Independently conducted, adequately powered controlled human trials.
- A published regulator-grade safety and immunogenicity assessment.
References and sources
- Regulatory / labelFDA — Certain bulk drug substances for use in compounding that may present significant safety risks
Source hierarchy: regulatory documents and trial registries first, peer-reviewed work next, sponsor material flagged as non-independent. We never use supplier or clinic marketing as evidence, and where a verified source has not yet been curated we say so rather than inventing one.
Evidence change history
No recorded changes yet. Baseline position set on 2026-08-23.